Jennifer Teege, granddaughter of a Nazi war criminal | DW English

hello and a very warm welcome to this latest edition of talking Germany and my guest today is a woman who one day apparently by chance made the shocking discovery that her grandfather was a murderous Nazi war criminal in fact the notorious concentration camp commandant Arman Gert familiar to very many people from Steven Spielberg's movie Schindler's List now that woman is Jennifer tiga and I want to say thank you very much Jennifer - coming to Berlin today to be here with us on talking Germany and to share your remarkable story with us I'd like to begin with a quote it's a quote from you you said on the one hand I've had a completely normal life and it strikes me that in that sentence the very interesting words are on the one hand what do you say well when I I was brought up as a child in a foster family first and then I was adopted so I had many years my childhood that that one could say normal I was not in contact with my biological family and they found out only recently all the things about my mother my grandmother and my grandfather that's so disturbing for me yeah and we're gonna be telling the whole story and it is a fascinating story the interesting things that I indicated in my introduction was that there was a there was a major change in your life when you went into a a library in your in town of Hamburg where you live and by pure chance you stumbled across a book that changed your life we'll talk about the book in a second but I'm very interested in the in the incident itself you were drawn to this book do you really believe it was by chance good not so I'm not sure I just explained you how it was today it was a day it's now five years ago and it was a it was a sunny day completely normal day in August so went to this library in the library is not a small library but it's a big library like the Central Library I live in in Germany in Hamburg I must interrupt you because I actually I became very interested in this and I phoned the library to ask them how many books they have they have three hundred and fifty thousand books what changed your life yeah so I don't know till today I have no real explanation I just know I went to the library and I was there I was already there for a while I was not searching for a specific book the sisters strolling around and suddenly I saw this book it was on the shelf and it had a red cover so it took I grabbed at the book and I quickly went through the book first I had a look at the cover and there was a small photograph under on the left side and it showed the picture of a woman an elderly woman may be around her forties something like this and she had a she looked familiar perfectly familiar not really it's like someone I knew there was just something in her eyes that made me I don't know wonder so I took the book and I went through the book mmm and there were more photographs and there was text and just went through the pages in in the very end there was a summarization and I could read biographical details and these details I knew from the paperwork surrounding from my adoption so when I when I saw this somehow I don't know what happens in the brain I am NOT a brain specialist but it became clear to me this must be a book a very special book and it was a book about my biological family that I haven't seen of my mother I haven't seen for many many many years and no one told me it's such a remarkable story okay you've had your first impressions there from Jennifer tiga and we've heard just a little bit of the story of how her life was changed as the cliche goes right out of the blue here's a fuller version of that story before we talk again Jennifer we've already had a sense of how your life is it is a real sort of overlapping of ordinary and extraordinary and just to get a feel for that I'd like to go back to the the occasion when you took the book off of the shelf and you realized your life had changed just three days later you were with your son at his first day at school you know a very ordinary everyday occasion how do you bring those to the emotions together that are evoked by those two different occasions it was almost impossible there was another incident before when I found the book the same day I went home and I was on my bed I was reading the book cover-to-cover one like in three or four hours it took me and then I went to the Internet and I started to research because I wasn't sure whether what I had read written I read in the book was true so I needed to verify and while doing the research I found a note that the same day there was in German TV a movie a movie about my mother and the the the servant of my grandfather was living in the house and pleasure Helen was inspired also featured in the movie so this was the same day and the evening I was sitting on the couch watching this movie and I saw how the that was everything I could see where my mother was living now I could see how my grandfather was executed so this was so serial it was so so strange that experience it's experiencing all this and having a day all day life like going with my my my my parents-in-law and my son to a restaurant because we needed to celebrate was yeah was almost impossible but I managed to do and this is all because I mean the the real challenge for you is it's not just it's your story of course but it's also the story of other people so very close to you in your life like your grandmother tell us a little bit more about her because she seems to be an incredibly complex character she's very complex and she was she's a person who was my childhood someone I knew so when I found out about my grandfather this was of course something very distressing but the thing that disturbed me more was the figure of my grandfather the grandmother I told you before that I was was adopted and the circumstances in my childhood but not so let's say this way it wasn't a safe surrounding for children my mother was together with the with a man who did beat her and so my grandmother was a a woman for me who provided me with the safe surrounding and she was someone who not only liked me but who when I came and she opened the door there was a smile on her face and on my face so this is what I could remember of my grandmother and when I read the book and I found out all the other things and suddenly got to know a different side of her it was not know that I didn't know before so this almost yeah also impossible to deal with this and it took me a long time somehow to find a solution how to how to integrate this into my life and one way that you did that was actually by visiting the concentration camp which is effectively in a suburb of Krakow in Poland in Poland well how did that help you the concentration camp is not existing anymore there's only a place we can can remember when I went there I went there not to it wasn't it wasn't my idea to go there to visit the place to see the place more important was for me I needed to find a way to with over a new then somehow to continue to live my life and I always thought when I just I couldn't Esther granddaughter of I'm on good I couldn't say okay this is something that was in the past it doesn't affect me and of course it affected me but I needed to leave the past behind I needed to to look forward so when I went to Prague ow and I went there not to visit but I wanted to put flowers too to leave flowers there it was for me one could describe it or compare it when you visit or when you go to a funeral because you need to say goodbye and sometimes you need to say it in a way that is something that is I don't know probably you know what I mean you don't have to go to a funeral you can say you can do it also privately but is this a ritual it's something yes it's symbolic moment for you deeply personally a very important symbol yeah a moment of closure yeah I think yep and I didn't know it in advance I didn't know why I felt so important for me to to go to crack up but when I when I left there was my flight back I felt a great sense of relief okay a little bit more just a second before we continue let's have a look at two scenes from the movie Schindler's List and we begin with the scene that brings together Oskar Schindler and his accountant it's actually who had a profound influence of course on Schindler shocking scenes the the word that is conventionally used to describe somebody like our mom Gert is evil very many people would use that word to explain his pathology his behavior is that oh is that a term that you would use as well that you is that an explanation for what happened I think there's a lot of Eva in my grandfather but I don't think that evil exists like the pure evil I think when you look at people everyone was born but the it was born blank so people become the way they are but many influences and my grandfather was of course someone who was especially through the film a symbol of evil but mankind is not you can't divide mankind and evil and good with my grandfather it's quite easy because there's so much evil one can see with my grandmother because you asked me about her before it's less it's less it's less obvious because she had different sides she was she was not killing herself but she was closing her eyes so she here you can see there's evil and there is some good she did some good things as well with me also there was an extraordinary mixture of things because she she she was perhaps an opportunist who profited from Armand Gertz status in the Nazi time at the same time though in the in the post-war period for example I know that she was she was an admirer of Villa Brandt the social democrat Chancellor she had sort of she had liberal sentiments in her how do you explain that I don't really know it's also striking because my father is Nigerian and my father was a friend of someone who was living with my grandmother she was she had someone who was renting out in a room in her apartment if she needed bubbly to share the apartment because she needed the money money at this time was extraordinary as well for this yeah for this time my father with dark-skinned me was thinking that my mother my grandmother must have been a racist this is the this does not really fit and she was also she also had someone living in the household who was homosexual at this time it was not only forbidden it was something you could go to jail yeah it was in the in the 1917 so she in her personality you see and how how people are they have good sites and they have bad sides and with my grandfather I think the bad sides they're so obvious that yeah there is some either but I think he's he's maybe one could also define him as a psychopath another extraordinary aspect of the whole story you're telling is that you saw the film Schindler's List the first time now I don't know how many times you've seen the movie maybe you only saw it once I just don't know but the first time you saw it in in Israel and you had gone as a young student to actually study in Israel how do you fit that into this whole complex that is your story to question the first thing many people assume that I've seen the movie a lot of times I saw the movie and I saw the movie not once I saw it a few times but still it is a movie but it's important for me are all the historical sources and I know them and I know a lot of lot is true so this is what counts for me more so I saw the movie but ok I don't have to see it 10 times I saw the movie the first time when I was living in Israel and I was a student I was in Israel I came to Israel in the beginning of my twenties I was in Paris before and there I met a girl from Israel who invited me to come over for holidays so I went there and stayed for five years but this is a different story but when I was there I saw the movie in the in the Israeli television and for me it was I think the same as it was for everyone it was a it was touchy and but it was something I thought I'm not connected with why should I it was so far from from something when I could imagine that I did not that I did not make a make a make a connect maybe I did not make made it make it made a connection something it's yep bringing the bringing all this and that all of this together worth it with your visit to Israel your long visit to Israel the fact that you're very familiar with that society you also as far as I understand you you went on a visit with his Raley schoolchildren to the to the camp near Krakow to what remains of the camp what how did they deal with that and how did you deal with them and the whole question of guilt first of all I was not sure whether I should do this trip because I said it once I'm not a specialist on the Holocaust so I thought if I go there maybe they expect me they expect someone else and I can't fulfill the expectation but my my friend annatee she asked me and it was the class of her son and normally they are also accompanied by their parents so she went with the class and I decided okay this time it's a good idea I would go with the class it was a very emotional trip I think for both of us for all the the students and for me it was the same day my adopted father died so I came straight from the hospital and I went to meet up with the children it was I was not prepared first I thought I will do the introduction in Hebrew and I had no time to prepare something but still we were very close and I told them who I am and I asked them or I told them if you want you can ask me whatever you like I will try to explain unit will try to answer you the questions and this is what they did so we had a wonderful wonderful encounter one could say and yeah in the end we we we were standing in front of big man Memorial and they asked me and I'd like to hit flowers and this time I was not alone but I was with my with my friends and they asked me whether I'd like to put the flowers for them and I did so I wasn't sure in the beginning also with this when I am the right person but because they asked me I did so and it felt yeah I thought good good for you good for you yeah all right and it felt right good and right yep or one aspect of life here in Germany in recent decades has been that many of the people who lived through the war years including victims and perpetrators of terrible crimes like the ones we've been talking about have for many different reasons being unable to talk about their experiences we have this report on how important it is to share those difficult memories Jennifer Germany has a very difficult recent history that's no doubt about that and some people confront it and some people are in denial about its recent history there has been a tendency to view Germany as a society that is scarred that is haunted by the untold stories is that how you experience Germany as you were growing up is that how you experience Germany now perhaps haunted is not the word that I would use I was born in 1970 so when I went to school in history class we did talk about the Holocaust we did talk about the world war did talk so much about this subject that we did not even talk about the time after the Second World War so we never talked about the United Nations or something it was really really a big issue in my school but it was only on an academic level people were not talking about their own in for example like in my in my family I can only relate to my adopted family my adopts its brand father he was in Africa and Arama and we talked about it but I I don't know maybe I felt some kind of I thought it's not I did not want to bother him you know to ask more know what was really happening in the war did you kill someone or like these this kind of question that that you feel uncomfortable you know when you're supposed to answer so I didn't want to make him feel guilty or that's interesting that's your adoptive father and obviously a very sensitive relationship let's talk about your actual biological mother since you made the discovery about your about your own personal story you have met your your biological mother tell us what happened there I met her met her after I found that the book I had a lot of questions questions about the history but also questions about our relationship and there's a blank spot in the year 1970 when I was born so I wanted to meet her and we have to find answers to all these questions that were Monte when we met it took me 1 and 1/2 years of preparation because there were so many difficult feelings that I needed first somehow to had to put everything into place and also to see her not only as my mother but as the woman she's also a woman with who is now an elderly woman with a with her own biography and she was brought up by my grandmother who never really told her about her father so she also grew up with the kind of family secret and I needed to understand all this first before I could could meet her in real life when we met it was a very very warm in a very nice nice 3-4 hours that we spent together and fortunate yeah it worked out it worked out I thought that we would see each other more often but I think she needs some time so at the moment yeah one and a half years ago mm-hmm another moment she doesn't want to see you and I was said this way my door is open if she wants to step in she's more than welcome yeah but you can't force someone it's her decision and I respect her decision but I hope to have more contact when you were younger you suffered from depression could you just in a nutshell explain how it felt yeah it felt it feels for me at least felt I had no contact with my inner self and I felt tired and I felt full of questions in my hat with no answer ok we'll talk about the symptoms and the possible answers in just a second but it's not just in Germany but around the world depression is seen as an increasingly widespread disorder it's a complaint that can have a huge impact on people's day-to-day lives as we've seen with Jennifer and it's certainly not easy to treat our next report features a woman who has written a book about her experience with combating depression Jennifer tiga the Ida the woman in that report says that she won her battle against depression does it have to be a battle that you have to win to overcome depression yes little think so in your case I had the feeling that when you described your depression and in your book what what you what you're describing is a is like a jigsaw that's yourself it's your own story and one or two pieces are missing I think there were more pieces missing than just one or two just explained it once when you make a puzzle I do like doing puzzles myself so I start with the frame and then you put in the pieces and in my life it was the frame was missing so when I found the book I had the frame and then I could put in all the small pieces it became a whole picture and in life I don't think that oh at least it would be a nice idea but it does life is not like this probably I won't have all the pieces in the end but at least they can see the whole picture now and this is a big big big relief and it's a big difference to how I felt before I know some people have suggested that the process for you of writing the book the intention of writing the book was a sort of therapy that's the way some people have interpreted that are they are they right to do so absolutely wrong the book that's chapter with my grandmother this is the chapter it is very personal because I had not the answers before I wrote the book and you see a development in this chapter but it is a book that I wrote because I thought there's so many issues the issue of identity the issue of guilt this year of self-esteem what does it make with the child when it's given up at such an early age of its life and all these things I wanted to share with people and I hope I mean I don't know but I hope that a lot of people can relate to this and that it gives them and you do you hope they look to think do you hope that people can relate to the book or do you know because I know that people can because in the last couple of weeks while I've been working around the book because I knew I was going to be meeting you I spoke to so many people who said yes the book the story they've helped me it was when I wrote the book but now all what I what I received may of letters phone calls yes people do start to think and what I want is that it's not an book you know that only has they did of course the past is important but you need to look look ahead and the final word of the book is the in Hebrew it's tikva antique fermions in english hope one last question all that we've been talking about is concerned with how your story was told to you yeah how has that influenced how you will tell the story to your children yes isn't when they've reached the right age I already told my children but I told them not everything because all the sadistic details and how you know people were killed with gas or how the dogs were killing people this is something you should need to share with your children in in this age they're quite small but they do know most of the things that of course they know about that I know about their biological family my family and I think it will give them a strong feeling of identity and they won't have to deal with the toxic power that this family secret can have and now with the book hopefully in ten years they were not ten years maybe five years they were read it and then they have the whole answer thank you one quick question we always have a quiz at the end of the show and I didn't want to have a quiz today I just wanted to ask you one question which always strikes me is so important do we learn from history or do we continue making the same mistakes I hope we learn from history but reality shows that we still have to learn a lot and we're doing the misstates over and over and over again and you are helping us an awful lot to try and avoid doing just that what a remarkable life jennifer tiga thank you very much once again for sharing it with us there's more talking Germany and my blog on an hour archived on our website if you've enjoyed today's show as much as I have come back next week bye bye until June you

Channel: DW News

Views: 2,069,439

Keywords: jennifer teege, amon göth, concentration camp, third reich, schindlers list, children's home, adoption, talking germany, dw, deutsche welle, nazi

Id: qIcb_Uh3ciY

Length: 29min 59sec (1799 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 03 2013